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Arguably the genre’s biggest act, As I Lay Dying, joined WTOP as it prepares to rock The Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland, this Friday night.
“We’ve done some incredible shows in the D.C. area,” frontman Tim Lambesis told WTOP. “Us being from the West Coast, our first time there we thought, ‘Nobody’s going to care,’ so when we got there we felt the love, so now we always look forward to coming back. … We generally will start with our Top 10 (hits), then we’ll add what’s missing. We try to represent at least two or three songs from each album and we’re playing a new song on this tour because we’re beginning to roll out for a new album later this year.”
Born in San Diego in 1980, Lambesis grew up listening to the metal bands of the ’80s and ’90s.
“Before the era of being able to discover bands on the internet, I would hear metal bands on the radio like Metallica,” Lambesis said. “The heaviest band I ever heard on the radio was Pantera, then as a kid, you’d sneak off to the record store to buy a metal record, because parents at that time frowned on metal, especially the album artwork. … It looked like something I wanted to sound like, with bands like Iron Maiden with Eddie on the cover.”
As I Lay Dying formed in 2000, named after William Faulkner’s famous 1930 novel.
“We had been tossing around different name ideas for a long time and couldn’t find anything,” Lambesis said. “Our guitar player at the time was going to college and had some literature assignment for his English class and don’t you remember those things called CliffsNotes? … He said, ‘I’ve never read the book, I don’t think the band should be tied into the book per se, but it’s a really cool title.'”
Equipped with a catchy name, they released their debut album “Beneath the Encasing of Ashes” (2001).
“I’m proud of it because foundationally it’s what got the band started,” Lambesis said. “Sometimes people talk about doing music forever and then they never actually do it, so I think anything that actually gets the gears in motion and gives you a chance to progress, for that reason, I’m proud of it. Also as a guitar player, I’d only been playing guitar for only a year and a half when I wrote all of that material, so it’s very simple in that regard.”
He says you can see his guitar skills progress on the following albums “Frail Words Collapse” (2003) and “Shadows Are Security” (2005), earning the first of three straight Artist of the Year titles at the San Diego Music Awards.
“I was the primary songwriter in the early days, but the band naturally evolved when Phil (Sgrosso) joined the band, so ‘Frail Words Collapse’ is an example of where you have an album with a very talented guitar player but not the primary songwriter,” Lambesis said. “Then when ‘Shadows Are Security’ came around, that’s the first time Phil and I had a chance to collaborate and we cowrote that album together.”
Everything fell into place for their fourth album, “An Ocean Between Us” (2007), their biggest success yet, including the hit song “Nothing Left,” which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance.
“‘An Ocean Between Us’ was a really monumental point where we had the formula figured out,” Lambesis said. “Historically, the Grammys had only taken recognizable names, they weren’t really promoting any of the younger bands, so we were pretty blown away that we got nominated. … You have all these people who don’t listen to this genre and they didn’t recognize anybody except Slayer, so they were like, ‘Oh, we’ll just give Slayer the award.'”
They kept things rolling with the albums “The Powerless Rise” (2010) and “Awakened” (2012).
“We had a choice to follow the trend of our peers, who’d seen the genre grow, taking it toward a more melodic direction to see if they could get some radio crossover … but we buckled down and said we’re going to make our heaviest record yet (with ‘The Powerless Rise’),” Lambesis said. “[‘Awakened’] pulled in a different producer outside of our genre to shake it up. … We weren’t really sure what was next regardless of the hiatus.”
The “hiatus” was caused by some serious legal trouble as Lambesis was sentenced to prison for solicitation of murder after attempting to hire a hit man (actually an undercover detective) in a failed plot against his first wife.
“I can’t talk about that transitionary period of my life without expressing the gratitude of having the opportunity to play music again,” Lambesis said. “Somebody can go down a dark path and make a terrible decision, but that doesn’t have to define the entirety of their life.”
Lambesis was released on parole in December of 2016, allowing the band to eventually reunite for its most recent album, “Shaped by Fire” (2019).
“It was really good timing creatively,” Lambesis said. “While I was gone, Phil and the rest of the guys had tried to pursue their band Wovenwar, but Phil had lost interest and left that band,” Lambesis said. “Coincidentally, it was the time that I wanted to start making music again.”
Their next album arrives this fall, including the newly single “Burden,” which you’ll hear Friday in Silver Spring.
“I personally love playing the new song ‘Burden,'” Lambesis said. “It’s like a breath of fresh air for me to have a new era of the band and to be working toward a new goal. We’re probably a couple weeks away from being able to announce [the album title]. All I can promise is that it will be out before the end of this year. If I had to make my best guess, the full album will be out closer to November will a handful of singles coming out throughout the year.”
Just don’t expect the set list to include music from his various side projects, from his Christian metal band Point of Recognition to his Arnold Schwarzenegger tribute band Austrian Death Machine.
“There’s no crossover,” Lambesis said. “I’ve had people in the audience hold up signs like ‘Get to the chopper,’ and I appreciate that, but the creative process and defining line of As I Lay Dying is the collaborative experience, so if it’s songs I’ve written solo, it doesn’t feel [right]. … I eventually need to do more Austrian Death Machine tours because I did one in Europe a few months ago and it actually surprised myself and my promoters how well it did.”
In other words, “he’ll be back.”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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